In most conventional workforce planning systems, an average future workforce requirement is estimated according to a historical trend and planned accordingly. The forecast of the future workforce requirement is usually generated from capturing the trend and random pattern of the historical workforce requirement. A workforce demand curve is then extended to a future time. Such an approach is very powerful, when the nature of the requirement is relatively stable (i.e. the evolution of the industry takes long relative to the planning horizon) and when highly integrated information systems are available. However, such models cannot adequately analyze the workforce requirements the today's staffing managers face, such as demand and supply uncertainty.
In a rapid maturing and growing market, historical data many not be viable and many not reflect the new trends in business. For example, in a business with frequent technological innovation, historical data may not accurately depict how the market requirement is going to change with a newly emerging technology and the associated project management.
Forecasting workforce demand is quite challenging. A common approach is to assess a probability that demand would be realized and when this probability exceeds a threshold, managers identify the workforce available to satisfy that demand. Using this method, a target probability is set and then the total workforce requirement for projects with the winning probability above the target, are evaluated. This approach though simple to implement and common in practice, can lead to a poor availability level of workforce.
In particular this problem occurs at IT consulting and integration services where there is a funnel of project opportunities, but there is uncertainty about the acquisition of each project. For example, if the threshold winning probability is set to 75%, a project manager plans to hire staff for project bids with a 75% probability of being accepted. However, project bids below this threshold are not staffed. Consequently, by ignoring all projects in the funnel with lower probabilities, the true workforce requirement is typically underestimated. Additionally, this type of workforce planning does not really reflect the uncertainties involved in the workforce requirement planning.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method and system that addresses the problems related to the management of the workforce requirement. The method and system should be simple, cost effective and capable of being easily adapted to existing technology.